


Remember A Day

by red_starshine



Category: Constantine (TV), Doctor Strange (2016), Hellblazer & Related Fandoms, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Doctors & Physicians, Gen, Healing, Hospitals, Magic, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-12
Updated: 2016-11-12
Packaged: 2018-08-30 11:10:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8530753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/red_starshine/pseuds/red_starshine
Summary: As a doctor, Stephen Strange witnessed a recovery that was nothing short of impossible.Years later, as the master of the New York Sanctum, Stephen discovers the real reason when he crosses his patient's path again.





	1. THEN

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not a doctor and have no medical training, so there's probably a lot of mistakes with the medical stuff.
> 
> Title is from Pink Floyd's 'A Saucerful of Secrets' album, which has art from the Doctor Strange comic on the cover.

“What do we know about our John Doe?” Doctor Stephen Strange asked the doctor standing next to him at the scrub sink.

“Not a lot," sighed Doctor Christine Palmer." No ID on him yet – if he was carrying any, it got lost in the fire. This guy was the only survivor inside the Brooklyn nightclub that they’ve pulled out so far. They’re still looking, but, y’know...” she trailed off, leaving the rest unsaid. It had been over six hours since the fire had been put out, over eight since the fire had started and gutted the building. The likelihood of finding more survivors inside what was left of the bar was dropping with every passing minute.

“He’s unresponsive and presenting with a traumatic brain injury,” Christine continued after a moment. “What kind and to what degree we don’t know yet. EMTs say it looked like he was hit in the forehead by falling debris. Of course, their initial report said he was dead too, but then he started breathing again in the ambulance, so we’re doing a CT scan as soon as he gets here to figure out exactly what’s going on in his head.”

The wail of the ambulance sirens outside wasn’t loud enough to be heard inside the hospital, but the gurney being rolled past the window above the sinks made both of them look up.

The first thought that occurred to Stephen was how tall this John Doe was. Stephen was by no means a small man, but if Doe had been on his feet, he would’ve stood at least half-a-foot taller than him.

His second thought was ‘ _That man does not look like he was pulled from a collapsed building after a fire._ ’ While the Doe was covered in ash and dust, there were no visible burns Stephen could see, no obvious breaks in his bones, only light bruising.

“So the guy has a burning building fall on him, was trapped underneath it for at least eight hours, and his body isn’t pâté?” said Stephen. “Even if he does have a TBI, that man is extremely lucky.”

Christine shrugged. “It is weird, isn’t it? The firefighters who rescued him thought he had third-degree burns and breaks in both arms and one leg, but the EMTs said everything looked fine - lungs are functioning and the heart kept going without any assistance once it started beating again - but he hasn’t regained consciousness since they got him out.”

“So they’re thinking it might be a hemorrhage,” said Strange, watching the orderlies wheel the Doe towards the radiology department for the CT scan. A hemorrhage would require emergency surgery as soon as possible to prevent further brain damage or death from the fluid slowly building up inside the skull, putting pressure on the brain. “Damn.”

“Yeah. Showtime, Stephen. Time to save the miracle survivor.”

 

* * *

  

“This can’t be right,” said Stephen in confusion, looking at the CT scan of the John Doe’s brain.

“What?” Christine looked over his shoulder at the four scans in front of Stephen.

“There’s a build-up of blood here consistent with an epidural hemorrhage,” said Stephen, pointing to a light grey shape bulging out between the skull and the brain on the earliest image with his pen. “But it gets significantly smaller between the ten minutes when the first and last images were taken. ” He paused. “I checked, it wasn't a mistake someone made labelling them, it really is getting smaller. And these were done about twenty minutes ago: at the rate it was growing smaller, it would be completely gone now.”

Christine’s brows furrowed. “That makes no sense. If it was a epidural hemorrhage, it’d be getting bigger, putting more and more pressure on the brain. How is it getting smaller without surgery to relieve the pressure?”

“It’s almost like the brain’s...healing itself,” said Stephen, regretting the words as soon as he said them out loud.

The two doctors were interrupted by a resident, fresh out of medical school, knocking on the door to the small room. “John Doe from the fire’s been ID’d by his family. And he just woke up.”

Stephen and Christine shared a look of confusion for a moment. There was a lucid interval sometimes with epidural hemorrhages, where the patient showed no symptoms even as the bleeding began to put pressure on the brain, but that interval was immediately after the head injury, not eight hours later. Usually the pressure build-up inside the skull became fatal after so long without surgical intervention.

“Is he lucid?” asked Stephen.

“You’re not going to believe it, but yeah. He’s acting 100 percent normal.”

“What’s his name?” asked Christine.

“Francis Chandler. But his wife said he prefers ‘Chas’.”

 

* * *

 

As Stephen predicted, an hour-long MRI on Francis revealed no trace of a hemorrhage, or any visible damage at all in their patient’s brain. Christine and Stephen paid Francis a visit after he had been moved from the hospital’s ICU to a smaller room.

Christine knocked on the open door before coming in. “Hi Chas. I don’t think we’ve had a chance to introduce ourselves yet. My name is Doctor Christine Palmer, and this is Doctor Stephen Strange. How’re you feeling? Anything hurt?” she said.

Stephen remained silent, watching how Francis reacted to Christine. He turned his head quickly to look at her when she knocked without any sign of pain or discomfort, meeting her eyes.

“I feel fine, doctor,” said Francis, looking as though he was the most surprised of all that he wasn't dead. “Am I on painkillers or something?” he asked, gesturing towards the IV stand next to his bed, and the thin clear tubing connecting the bag on the IV stand to the needle in the crook of his elbow. "Last thing I knew, I was in pretty bad shape."

Just as the resident had said, perfectly lucid.

“No painkillers - we’ve just got you on a saline drip at the moment.” Christine pulled out her penlight, clicked it on, and approached Francis. “May I?”

Francis nodded and Christine shone the light in both eyes.

“Pupils reacting normally,” she told Stephen, clicking off the light, and then turned back to Francis. “So, you don’t appear to have any lasting injuries after what happened to you,” she said. “But we’re going to keep you for observation. There’s some concern that you might have sustained a head injury when the roof collapsed, and those can be kind of tricky. If you get a really bad headache or nausea, push your call button and we’ll come to check you out right away. A nurse will check in on you every few hours as well.”

“But I’m okay otherwise?” said Francis.

Christine smiled. “Not even a sprained ankle.”

Francis looked at her in disbelief. “How is that possible?”

At that, Christine faltered, the smile falling off her face for a moment. “Well, we’re not sure exactly. We’ve never seen anything like what happened to you. But it looks like you'll make a full recovery."

Francis looked down at the blanket of his bed. "How many people died in the fire?"

Christine hesitated. "I'm not su--"

Stephen cut her off. "They're still looking for other survivors, but you're the only one they've found after hours of searching."

Francis leaned back against his pillow for a moment, stunned.

"Do you need anything else, Chas?" asked Christine.

"Could you send my family back in?" he asked quietly. 

Christine's expression softened. "Of course," she said, and left the room.

Stephen lingered in the room a moment after Christine had left. He turned back towards Francis.

“What Doctor Palmer told you before isn’t quite right,” said Stephen. “You _did_ have a TBI when you were brought here – an epidural hemorrhage, something that should’ve killed you by the time you got to the hospital. But not only did it _not_ kill you, it defied everything I know about epidural hemorrhages and reversed itself without surgery. So you have no brain damage, no sign of a TBI, no bodily injuries, and are probably the single luckiest man on the face of the Earth at the moment.”

Francis stared at him, open-mouthed, and kept staring at Stephen when he turned around and walked out the door.


	2. NOW

Stephen’s Sling Ring was currently a melted hunk of brass floating in an alternate dimension above Gramercy Park, which meant that he would have to get back to the New York Sanctum by other, more ordinary methods.

Looking down at his sorcerer's attire, he sighed, temporarily shifting his long blue robes into a less conspicuous business suit. The Cloak of Levitation reconfigured itself into a dark red coat to complete the illusion.

Stepping out onto the sidewalk near the park's gate, he held his arm up as he reached the curb. “Taxi!”

Within moments, a yellow cab veered to a stop in front of him. Stephen looked at the cab for a moment – it appeared to be an older model than most on the streets of New York City, although it was lovingly maintained for its age: not a dent or scratch anywhere.  A blonde man wearing a tan trench coat eyed him from the passenger's seat next to the cab driver, but the backseat of the taxi was empty.

"177A Bleecker Street, please," said Stephen as he opened the door and slid into the backseat. He quickly put on his seatbelt, his hand tremors more pronounced than usual. Cars of any kind always made him think of his accident.

"Mate," said the blond man to the cabbie in a British accent. "We've got a schedule to keep, yeah?" 

"Keep your pants on," the cabbie muttered to the blond man before speaking louder to Stephen. "Sure, I can get you there."

Stephen hesitated. The man's voice sounded familiar. He looked at the cabbie's reflection in the rearview mirror - dark brown hair, beard, very tall.

The pieces fell into place.

"I know you," Stephen said before the cabbie could put the taxi back in gear. Stephen tried to dredge up memories that felt like they were from a lifetime ago, before the car accident that had ruined his medical career. "You were the only survivor of that nightclub fire in Brooklyn four years ago. You came to my hospital when they pulled you out." He had to think for a moment to remember his name. "It's Chas, isn't it? Short for Francis."

A crease appeared between Chas's eyebrows, and he looked over his shoulder into the backseat. So did the blond man next to him, a wary expression on his face.

"Yeah, it is. You were one of the doctors there?" said Chas. "I think I remember you too. I was 'the single luckiest man on the face of the Earth at the moment'," he chuckled. His laughter stopped abruptly when he noticed the scars lining Stephen's hands.

"Your head trauma undid itself," Stephen said quietly. "Right in front of my eyes. Like magic."

At the last word, the blond man noticeably flinched. 

The thin hairs on the back on Stephen's neck stood up. Senses he hadn't been aware of four years ago flared to life, and he marveled for a moment at the flow of magical energy swirling around both men in the front seat. The energy around Chas seemed to be protective in nature - no, that wasn't quite right. Regenerative. He had absorbed the lives of the other patrons who had died in the nightclub that night. If he was killed now, his fatal injuries would heal and he'd come back to life.

He only knew of one spell that would be able to do something like that - a spell that had long been considered a myth. It cast Chas's miraculous recovery four years ago into a new light.

"How the hell did you get Merlin's Ward of Protection cast on you?" Stephen blurted out, taken aback. "No sorcerer's been able to pull off that spell in hundreds of years."

Chas and the blond man glanced at each other.

"Right then, perhaps I should introduce myself," said the blond man, turning around to face Stephen with a sly grin. He pulled a business card out of the pocket of his trench coat and handed it to Stephen. "Name's John Constantine."

According to John's business card, he was an exorcist, demonologist and 'Master of the Dark Arts'.

"It was you?" asked Stephen, looking at John again. There was a substantial amount of magical power beneath that rumpled trench coat, but it wasn't practiced enough to be able to pull off a spell of that magnitude. At least, Stephen wouldn't have thought so if he hadn't unknowingly witnessed the spell's effects firsthand. "How?"

"Oh, you know," said John. "Get good and drunk before you cast it. Then kiss 'im afterwards."

Chas snorted.

"So I'm guessing if you know what Merlin's Ward is, you're not just a New York City doctor, are you?" said John with a snide look.

"I am a doctor, was a doctor, yes," said Stephen. "Doctor Stephen Strange, master of the mystic arts."

John rolled his eyes. "You're just saying that because of what's on my business card, aren't you?" he huffed. "What comic book did you pull that name out of?"

"I'm the current master of the New York Sanctum, and that is my actual name." Stephen bit down on a retort that as master of one of the Sanctums, he had more of a right to the title of 'master of the mystic arts' than John did.

"I see, so you're one of the Ancient One's students," said John as Chas thumbed the taxi's turn signal. "Then maybe we can compare notes."


End file.
